Thursday, July 30, 2015

Pixels (2015)

Currently, it feels as if people are programmed to hate any Adam Sandler film released, even without having seen it. They’re prerogative is that Adam Sandler no longer
makes “good movies”. Nowadays, you can’t read a review for an Adam Sandler film
without it centering around how much Sandler sucks now and how he hasn’t made a
good movie in eons and blah, blah, blah. I’m not into hating for hates sake,
which is what is apparently happening with Sandler, it’s this hive like
mentality of hatred towards Sandler. Where does the hatred stem from? Probably
from the string of bad movies he’s been making. The last torturous one I saw
was Jack and Jill (2011) and that one turned me off from seeing Sandler movies.
How did I end up seeing that one in theaters you might ask? Well, I like to
give movies the benefit of the doubt, sometimes I come out a winner and
discover a film I would have not seen otherwise, but other times, like with
Jack and Jill it’s just like“WHYYYYY?!” The way I see it and in Sandler’s
defense I will say that we can’t really blame Sandler for making bland family
movies, because that’s who he is, he’s the all encompassing actor who makes
films that are supposed to appeal to everyone. He’s movies are made to be
consumed in mass quantities and in order to do that, the film has to be a
certain way. They can’t be too intense, or bloody, or offensive or violent,
they gotta have that ‘feel good, nothing bad is going to happen’ vibe to them.
Like, don’t take nothing to seriously, you’re here just to have some fun. Let’s
just accept that he’s the guy who makes that type of film, that’s who he’s
become. He’s gone the way of Eddie Murphy, but in a successful way? My advice
is, if you don’t like the crappy pappy movies that Sandler makes, don’t go and
see them! Just wait until he works with a good director, gets critical acclaim
again and makes something like Punch Drunk Love (2002), his only truly good film
if you ask me.

So just how squeaky clean is Pixels? Well, just by way of an
example, in one scene when Sandler sees Pac-Man eat the hand of his creator, and
Sandler he says “that was some weird….stuff” instead of “That was some
weird…shit!” He even pauses before saying ‘stuff’ as if mentally correcting
himself saying “nope, gotta keep it PG-13!” But whatever man, you can say
“shit” in a PG-13 movie, it’s just that you’re so self censored that you can’t
even bring yourself to say shit. The most basic of cusses. It feels as if
Sandler is in a censored state of mind even as he films, in other words, no real
space to cut loose and go crazy. Feels like there’s no improv and if you have a
good comedian on your film, usually that’s where comedy gold is at, the improv.
But no, dialog here is clean as a whistle, god forbid word of mouth spreads and
a mother ends up saying something like “my kid is not going to see that nasty
Adam Sandler movie, he’s always cussing”. So following Sandler’s squeaky clean
movie rules, the film will have kids and families, often times dysfunctional
families facing problems and overcoming them (like a divorce for example) and
Sandler will be sympathetic and kind to the kid in the movie because that’s the
target audience. So this is the kind of movie you can expect my friends. A film
following a formula every step of the way. Nothing is to be taken too seriously;
you can’t invest yourself emotionally because you know nobody will die. Not in
a squeaky clean Adam Sandler family movie like this one, so just sit back and
watch the fireworks, which is really the only thing that this movie is good
for.

Some folks seem to think that this film was based on an
episode of Futurama that has a similar premise, but in reality, this film is
based on a French short film that lasts only about 2 ½ minutes, it is also called
Pixels (which you can seehere) and it sets the ground rules for the look and the mechanics of the’
video games come to life’ part of the film. The short makes no sense or
meaning, it just shows us a guy putting an old television in the garbage and
suddenly from said television all these old video games emerge. Suddenly Donkey
Kong is on top of the Empire State building throwing barrels, Pac Man is eating
street cars and Centipedes fly through the skies. In the short, the video game
characters destroy the city by turning everything they touch into square little
pixels, but that’s about as far as the thing goes. It has no story, no
villains, no heroes, just a concept which Chris Columbus and Adam Sandler ran
with and stretched into a film. And I say stretched because that’s what they
did, the films premise is so simple, the story so non-existent, the characters
so one note that they had to stretch things out. Pixels feels repetitive and one note; we fight one video
game, beat it, then fight the next one, and they go on and on like this till
the end. There’s nothing unexpected here, this is as formulaic as it gets.
Worst part? This is the kind of movie in which the trailer has shown you
everything. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you know, step by step how this
movie is going to go.

What this movie is though is a nostalgia bomb. If you were
born in the 80’s and played video games in arcades the way I did, you will feel
a shot of nostalgia in your system. I have to admit it was cool seeing a giant
Pac-Man eating up taxi cabs and city streets, especially since I’m such a
Pac-Man nut! It was awesome seeing a giant King Kong throwing barrels at Adam
Sandler, and then there’s this scene where they simply throw as many old video
game characters on the screen as they can, so you’ll see Frogger, Q-bert,
Paperboy, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders…and that’s without counting all the
other characters from 80’s pop culture that show up in the film like Max
Headroom, Ronald Reagan, Madonna and Hall & Oates. The soundtrack is made
up of hits from the 80’s all the way. So in this sense, the movie proves
entertaining to an extent, you will be like “Oh there’s Q-Bert!” Still, I think
they could have used even more classic video game characters on the film,
apparently they could only afford to use a limited amount of characters. Where
was the knight from Ghosts and Goblins? Sadly, the novelty of seeing old video
game characters on screen is the only thing this film has to offer, the movie
itself is just a bunch of empty calories starting by the fact that the villains
in this movie are faceless, we never really know who they are because they talk
through videogame characters. So suddenly, our favorite old school video games
are evil. I mean, I never saw Pac-Man as a bad guy? But there he is eating
people up! So yeah, this is yet another film with a weak villain whom we never
even get to meet. Pixels is extremely simple and banal that’s all I can say.

Chris Columbus directs this film and it's sad to see him directing such a simplistic film, considering he's actually done decent family films like Home Alone and Home Alone 2, hell this is the guy who wrote Gremlins (1984) and freaking The Goonies (1985)! I would have liked something from Columbus with a little more story put into it, instead the whole film runs on a gag, not really even trying to get us invested. Pixel does have its moments,
again, mostly its moments are associated with the appearance of the giant video
game characters, but where’s the comedy? It’s not here; Pixels feels like they
are not even really trying. I mean, you got all these good actors and comedians
in your movie, why not have them throw in some of their own personality, let
them improvise, let them put a little of their soul into the proceedings. This
is the reason why Ghostbusters (1984) worked so well, it had a lot of Bill
Murray and Dan Aykroyd in it, it’s their personalities that bring those
characters to life. In contrast, on Pixels Sandler seems to have no
personality, he’s got this spaced out, bored look on his face all the time?
Like he doesn’t even want to speak? He’s so laid back that he comes of as
lifeless. So yeah, I get why people hate on Sandler so much, he’s just not
doing anything relevant lately, I hope he gets his mojo back at some point. Still,
Pixels isn’t terrible, it’s completely watchable, just not very engaging or
hilarious. It’s simply put a very average film. But hey, there’s Frogger
jumping and smashing a car into pieces! Cool!

6 comments:

Its not a mega Awesome movie but is true what you said....its watchable. And if you're fan of oldies video games you might like it. Good review. Poor adam i read somewhere that "Adam Sandler must be stop" but he's trying to be clean in almost all his movie. One of lately (well its a bit old) was "You don't mess with the Zohan" ppl didn't like it but i cracked myself everytime i watch it. Is stupid but is funny in his way.

Yeah, Sandler has made me laugh, I'm not an instant hater as I said on my review. This film was fun, I'll give it that, but a movie shouldnt run on nostalgia alone, which is what happens here. I just wished that the rockin' 70-80's soundtrack and the old video games were accompanied by a better story, something a bit more gripping. I mean, there's the thing with the kids mom being divorced and what have you, but they didn't even take advantage of that plot line to somehow give the movie heart, which is what this film is missing. They needed to give the characters something more to fight for, something that really mattered. As it is, this is just a special effects showcase, which I love, but I can't give it a high rating because while the old video game characters were awesome, the movie didn't engage me in any other way, this is what I call a "lost opportunity".

But yeah, I'm a huge fan of old video games, I play Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Mappy, Galaga and Galaxian at home all the time on my big screen tv, and I loved the scenes with Pac-Man, but that's as far as it went. At the very least it made me want to get my hands on Donkey Kong and Centipede.

I love Chris Columbus but I hate Adam Sandler, so I'm not sure if I could sit throught this. By the way, I just read your post about Ant-Man and it was great. In fact, I also wrote about it in my blog (wich I encourage you to visit):

www.artbyarion.blogspot.com

I hope you enjoy my review, and please feel free to leave me a comment over there or add yourself as a follower (or both), and I promise I'll reciprocate.

Sergei: Exactly, I think a better movie could be made with this very concept.

Arion: Of course, Columbus wrote Gremlins, and directed the first two Home Alone movies which where in my book, decent family films. Plus he wrote one of my favorite movies from the 80's The Goonies! So yeah, I like him. Here I think he was just making a commercial film to have a hit on his repertoire again since Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief wasn't a money maker (actually it lost money).